WASHINGTON (AP) —A planned meeting of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration committee to recommend the makeup of seasonal flu shots for the 2025-2026 influenza season was abruptly canceled Wednesday.
That’s according to Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.
If the meeting originally set for March 13 is not rescheduled promptly, it could delay production and distribution of shots to protect Americans against the disease, another official said.
Flu sickens millions and causes between 6,300 and 52,000 deaths each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I don’t understand who did this or why it was done,” Offit said in an email.
In the absence of the U.S. panel’s recommendation, officials would turn to the World Health Organization to determine which strains to include in the next season’s shots, he added